


General Winter

by boomvroomshroom



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Dark Jon Snow, Dark Sansa, Episode: s06e09 Battle of the Bastards, Gen, Jon Snow is a Targaryen, R Plus L Equals J, Ramsay is fucked, but also just plain fucked, it does not end well for him, like he's fucked in the head
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-20
Updated: 2019-05-20
Packaged: 2020-03-08 18:34:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,301
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18900301
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/boomvroomshroom/pseuds/boomvroomshroom
Summary: Jon Snow returns. He wants revenge.He will get it.A rewrite of Jon Snow's Season 6 (3 years too late but whatever).





	General Winter

**Author's Note:**

> A response to the TV show dumbing down Jon Snow, because while the cinematography of BotB was amazing, the plot was not. In the books, Jon was less honorable and much more practical to reality, unlike Ned or Robb. He managed to survive internal factions within the Night's Watch, while at the same time balancing Cersei, Stannis, and multiple other external factors like even the Iron Bank.
> 
> He got killed in the mutiny, not because he let the wildlings in (a practical choice to fight the Others), but because he wanted to use the Night's Watch to recapture Winterfell and save Arya from Ramsay (not realizing that it wasn't actually her) and thus involving himself in matters of the realm.
> 
> The point is, Jon was doing pretty well for himself up until he let his emotions dictate his choices, and the moment he did he got immediately shafted just like Ned and Robb.

They stand around the late Lord Commander's body. He is cold. They hold their breaths, waiting for him to take his own.

But nothing comes. Night falls and the sun rises. Melisandre prays and prays, repeating her spells over and over again. Nothing comes. Jon Snow is still dead.

"We need to burn him," Tormund says, "else he'll _really_ rise from the dead – with blue eyes instead of grey." 

_Lies, all lies,_ Melisandre thinks. _The Red God has forsaken me._ There is nothing else that can explain the awful pain in her heart as the wildlings and Davos pile dry wood on top of Jon Snow. The pain becomes a sharp knife and rips her in two when she lights the pyre.

To watch him burn was to accept that she had failed. As long as the body still existed there might still be hope that he could be revived, but all the magic in the world could not turn ashes to bone again. The wolf, too, knows this, its intelligent red eyes gleaming, and it howls with the keening cry of a living thing with no reason left to live.

_Perhaps…?_ The wildlings had spoke of wargs, of Jon Snow being one, so perhaps – maybe she could not bring back his soul because it was already present in another –

Her hope is as burnt as the pyre when the wolf runs into the flames and throws itself upon its master. And just like that, both are gone.

She sinks to her knees silently, the despair and cold numbing all emotion and resistance out of her. Time to accept her defeat, and start over. If she even has the strength left to do so. She can see her power disappearing along with the wood in the flames.

The pyre burns.

And it burns some more.

The fires die right when the night is blackest.

Dawn comes.

.

.

.

Jon Snow rises, unburnt, from the ashes.

 

* * *

 

Jon Snow is different now.

_They say he came back, but I know the truth. Death is final. Whoever it is who inhabits Jon Snow's body, is not the person I once knew._ Only death could pay for life. Just so. The wolf's death had paid for its master's life, but Melisandre wonders just how much wolf and how much man returned. She still wonders as she stares at the dangling feet of the mutineers. Their bodies hang merrily in the wind like demented marionettes, necks bent at odd angles.

Because of a shortage of supplies, the former Lord Commander ordered to save their remaining rope. Use a shorter length, he ordered. We'll make do, he insisted.

The shorter lengths of rope meant that instead of a long hard drop that would immediately break their necks and spare their suffering, the rebel brothers asphyxiated over several minutes. Twitching. Turning blue. Eyes popping.

Jon Snow watches dispassionately. No fear, no disgust, no joy. Just a solid satisfaction.

_'They' are often wrong. 'They' also said that Jon Snow was the spitting image of Eddard Stark, from his face to his mannerisms._ But Jon Snow had a stony practicality to him that was entirely his own. Before his second birth that practicality had been held back by youth and his kind nature, but now it was all that had survived his black brothers' traitorous knives. Any kindness or honor he had left, he did not show to Melisandre.

 

* * *

 

Bolton outnumbers their wildlings six to one. The other Northern houses fear the Boltons too much, or are too weary of fighting, to aid the rebellion. The polite ones explain that they are tired and destitute from Robb Stark's war. The cruel ones mention they wouldn't fight for him anyway, because the Starks are dead and he is not a Stark.

"You would rather live? Then live. I pray you also live when Ramsay Bolton comes around to rape your daughters and flay your sons for sport. You will have yourselves to blame then, for you deserve the judgment of the leader you accept."

He does not beg. He does not flatter. His truth is as clear and cold as the ice in his eyes.

When the battle comes, they are still outnumbered, thirteen thousand to two thousand, cavalry against undisciplined wildlings, on a large dry field perfect for encirclements and charges. Even with trenches and caltrops, sheer numbers would eventually overwhelm them. Even without these disadvantages, Jon Snow is not the military genius his brother was.

But he doesn't need to be.

In truth not all of the wildlings populated the field that day. While the rest of the North faced the field, Winterfell was retaken in secret using the same trickery Theon Greyjoy and then the Boltons themselves had used to have stolen it in the first place. While Ramsay plays at war on the open field, every single last one of his loyal retainers still manning the castle is slaughtered, even the hounds.

Ramsay Bolton misses three times before he hits Rickon Stark, but Jon Snow doesn't miss once before he hits Ramsay Bolton.

As the Bastard of the Dreadfort falls from his horse, both sides realize two things:

The wildlings would fight to the death for Jon Snow, and

the peasant levies under Ramsey, held together only through fear, threat of death, the raping and flaying of their loved ones, never wanted to be there in the first place.

The wildlings hold their ground. The Bolton forces sneak away when they can. The Vale takes care of the rest.

 

* * *

 

"They say the Boltons flayed their enemies, but do you remember what the Kings of Winter did to traitors?"

The lords who did nothing are given nothing. Their firstborn sons are handed over to Winterfell as hostages, so that next time, they would have no doubts about which side to pick. The lords who sided with the Boltons are given quick executions, their lands and titles transferred over to the ones who fought. Finally, Ramsay, barely alive –

It was Sansa Stark's idea to give him a horrible, painful death, which did not surprise Melisandre. But the Jon Snow of old would not have agreed to it. He would have argued for a clean death, and to put the mess behind them. This Jon Snow, on the other hand, is keen to agree with his sister. He sees her realize her political potential, long stunted by the loving stupidity of Catelyn Stark. He recognizes her subtle brilliance, honed under the tutelage of the Lannisters, the Tyrells, and Petyr Baelish. He recognizes that the two of them are the same.

That wide-eyed, bright-hearted little girl that left Winterfell with her head full of songs and fairy tales had died in King's Landing under the tender mercies of King Joffrey. That headstrong, naive little boy had had his honor frozen out of him at the Wall, the rest chipped away under the mutineers' knives. The two of them, raised under Eddard Stark's quiet kindness and honor, stripped away so only the steel bones of the Kings of Winter remained. 

The two of them impale Ramsey Bolton on the branches of the heart tree in the Winterfell godswood, with water poured over his gaping wounds.

In the cold, it freezes upon contact, and the human ice sculpture sits there, hauntingly beautiful and terrible all at once. The low temperatures clot his blood. It will be the gangrene and frostbite that slowly kills him.

_There is ice in Jon Snow, otherwise how would he have survived the fires unburnt? His is so cold, not even fire could melt it._

"I hope this shall be the only time I ever need to do this," he says. Not out of guilt or kindness. It is a warning.

It works, because the Stark line is unbroken after that.


End file.
